Friday Fancy: Ivan E Coyote
It’s rare to find written work that is as quietly beautiful as Ivan E Coyote’s. This queer writer and spoken word performer manages to encapsulate, in her short stories and accounts, a picture of what it is like to be gay, to have a queer identity, and to deal with the smaller things, the everyday and the mundane, so to speak. The events she relays are not monumental, and this, I think, is a good thing – too often, queer literature focuses on the larger events: coming out, for example.
But the way she writes, the things she says, are like small victories. They are tender accounts of the things that we don’t really think about, but that make up parts of our lives that only really matter once we are there, doing those things, dealing with those people. Her stories are like love letters, and when I read them, I am a little prouder, a little more aware, a little more in love with my identity and sexuality. If the pop culture avalanche we are assaulted with day after day is the rest of the meal, Ivan E Coyote’s stories are the sorbet that cleanses our palettes and get us ready for the next wave.
Oh I know, I know I develop crushes on creative queers on an almost daily basis. But Missed Her, Coyote’s latest offering, was the last book I completed, and, to put it mildly, I adored it. The clip below, which you should really watch, is a reading of one of the chapters that I loved the most, and reminded me of why exactly I love women so much. That’s a lot of love for one sentence, I know. But watch, and you’ll see what I mean.
I haven’t read any of Coyote’s work but judging by this video alone, an admirable, interesting spokesperson but, no poet? Could you include an excerpt or two? I am interested but unconvinced…
She’s not a poet, she’s a writer/spoken-word performer… Not sure I can really type any of her stuff out, but you should see if you can wrangle a copy from somewhere. She writes beautifully (in my opinion).